On October 7, 2007, drunken vandals at the Orsay Museum in Paris, France, punched a hole in the canvas of a painting entitled Le Pont d’Argenteuil by the famous Impressionist painter, Claude Monet.
A security camera caught the doings of 4 to 5 vandals who broke into the museum via a back door early on a Sunday morning. The hole in the painting is approximately 4-inches and can be repaired. The intruders fled the museum after an alarm went off when the Monet painting was hit. No arrests have yet been made.
In similar (yet different) art vandalism news, a French artist, Rindy Sam, is on trial for leaving a lipstick kiss mark on an all white painting by Cy Twombly at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Avignon, France. Apparently museum conservationists and restorers are stymied as to how to remove the lipstick stain. They’ve tried over 30 different products and have not been able to remove the pigment. Ms. Sam claims the kiss was an act of love. While I have often remarked that some paintings have a surface that is quite lickable, I have always been able to restrain myself from actually licking a painting.
My advice? Love art, but don’t make out with it. Cy Twombly’s abstract painting is part of a traveling exhibition and owned by the art collector Yvon Lambert who has sued for damages for about 2 million euros. Look for a French verdict for Ms. Sam on November 16, 2007.
Perhaps Ms. Sam used a lipstick that has high concentrations of lead in it? A recent report from an independent cosmetics industry watchdog group tested the ingredients of lipstick and found that many brands of lipstick use dangerous levels of lead in their makeup. One-third of the lipsticks tested were found to contain suspicious levels of lead.
It’s ironic that bottled water is bound by law to list their ingredients but makeup companies and tobacco companies do not have to be forthright in their ingredient list. Any product that is to be used, ingested, and/or absorbed into the body should have an accurate and complete ingredients list.
A security camera caught the doings of 4 to 5 vandals who broke into the museum via a back door early on a Sunday morning. The hole in the painting is approximately 4-inches and can be repaired. The intruders fled the museum after an alarm went off when the Monet painting was hit. No arrests have yet been made.
In similar (yet different) art vandalism news, a French artist, Rindy Sam, is on trial for leaving a lipstick kiss mark on an all white painting by Cy Twombly at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Avignon, France. Apparently museum conservationists and restorers are stymied as to how to remove the lipstick stain. They’ve tried over 30 different products and have not been able to remove the pigment. Ms. Sam claims the kiss was an act of love. While I have often remarked that some paintings have a surface that is quite lickable, I have always been able to restrain myself from actually licking a painting.
My advice? Love art, but don’t make out with it. Cy Twombly’s abstract painting is part of a traveling exhibition and owned by the art collector Yvon Lambert who has sued for damages for about 2 million euros. Look for a French verdict for Ms. Sam on November 16, 2007.
Perhaps Ms. Sam used a lipstick that has high concentrations of lead in it? A recent report from an independent cosmetics industry watchdog group tested the ingredients of lipstick and found that many brands of lipstick use dangerous levels of lead in their makeup. One-third of the lipsticks tested were found to contain suspicious levels of lead.
It’s ironic that bottled water is bound by law to list their ingredients but makeup companies and tobacco companies do not have to be forthright in their ingredient list. Any product that is to be used, ingested, and/or absorbed into the body should have an accurate and complete ingredients list.
